Complex Systems Engineering M.S. and Ph.D.
Engineered and natural systems comprise many individual components, interacting in a nonlinear adaptive manner, and giving rise to complex, emergent behaviors. Knowledge of the scientific laws governing the behavior of individual components is necessary but often insufficient for understanding the aggregate behavior of these systems. Modeling, analyzing and controlling them requires adopting a holistic approach that surpasses the traditional boundaries of individual disciplines, while still being rooted in fundamental physical, chemical, and biological principles.
Members of the Complex Systems Engineering (CSE) concentration are united by the common goal of understanding how systems-level behavior emerges from component wise interactions, by combining mathematical modeling with data science, nonlinear dynamics, numerical simulation, optimization, and stochastic processes methods to enable insightful physical, chemical, and biological modeling of individual system components and their interactions. CSE research spans a wide range of application domains such as cyber physical systems, environmental fluids, microbial communities, renewable energy, synthetic biology, transportation, infrastructure, and power networks.
The CSE curriculum (effective Academic Year 2024-2025) offers foundational courses in data science and mathematical modeling of natural and engineered systems, complemented with domain-specific courses tailored to each student's research interests. CSE educates future leaders and innovators in research, technology and policy to integrate knowledge from multiple domains via quantitative, systems-level thinking.
If you need an accessible copy of this document email cee_grad@cornell.edu.
Faculty members in the Complex Systems Engineering area are: